Coming Soon

ASPEN FILM SUMMER 2010 PROGRAMS - TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

Aspen Film and the Aspen Institute are pleased to announce a new partnership to bring you a selection of world-class film experiences this summer. Join us at the Aspen Ideas Festival when we launch NEW VIEWS: Premiere Documentaries Presented with the Aspen Institute, a new series highlighting critically acclaimed documentaries and filmmaker conversations that will continue through July and August.

Additionally, Aspen Film is proud to collaborate on the Aspen Institute’s other film offerings during the Aspen Ideas Festival.

NEW VIEWS: Premiere Documentaries - Click here for FILM LINE-UP!

WHEN: July 8, 19 + 26; August 2 + 9 at 8:00pm

WHERE: Paepcke Auditorium, 1000 N. Third Street

TIX: $16 per show.  On sale now at Aspen Show Tickets at the Wheeler, 970.920.5770 or in person at 320 East Hyman Avenue. If available, tickets will also be sold at the door starting 30 minutes prior to screening start time.

A renaissance in documentary filmmaking is underway that is having a major impact on American public discourse on the arts, politics and life. This summer the Aspen Institute in partnership with Aspen Film presents a series of critically acclaimed new documentaries focusing on music, the visual arts, current events and more. Not yet available to the general public, these inspiring, thought-provoking films have won audiences and awards on the international film festival circuit.

Each screening will be followed by a conversation with the director or a special guest related to the film.  The series launches during Aspen Ideas Festival on July 8 and continues Monday evenings (July 19, July 26, August 2 and August 9) at 8:00pm in Paepcke Auditorium.  NEW VIEWS: Premiere Documentaries is made possible by generous donations from Evelyn & Leonard Lauder and Jane & Michael Eisner.

NEW VIEWS

Thursday JULY 8 - The Furious Force of Rhymes (work-in-progress)
Also screens as part of Aspen Ideas Festival

Monday JULY 19 - Bill Cunningham New York

Monday JULY 26 - Waste Land

Monday AUGUST 2 - The Woodmans

Monday AUGUST 9 - Freakonomics

TIX: $16 per show.  On sale now at Aspen Show Tickets at the Wheeler, 970.920.5770 or in person at 320 East Hyman Avenue. If available, tickets will also be sold at the door starting 30 minutes prior to screening start time.

NEW VIEWS: Premiere Documentaries is made possible by generous donations from Evelyn & Leonard Lauder and Jane & Michael Eisner.

NEW VIEWS & ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL Co-presented with Aspen Film The Furious Force of Rhymes (work-in-progress)	The Aspen Institute and Aspen Film present an advance viewing of Director Joshua Atesh Litle's new work-in-progress The Furious Force of Rhymes. Traveling through four continents and six countries, The Furious Force of Rhymes is a fascinating documentary look at hip-hop as transnational protest music. The viewer will encounter characters as diverse as Israeli Jews, marginalized French Arabs, East German skinhead punks, and West African feminists, all of whom share a common musical language. Originating from the ghettos of New York, rap music has found adherents in every country in the world.  Recognizing themselves in the oppression of American blacks, people everywhere have adapted the US street music to their own causes. The Furious Force of Rhymes is directed by Joshua Atesh Litle (Ever Since the World Ended), produced by ARTE, the Smithsonian Channel, Link TV, and the prestigious French documentary company, Les Films d'Ici, well-known for Waltz with Bashir and To Be and to Have. Panelists: Joshua Atesh Litle, Filmmaker, The Furious Force of Rhymes Thursday July 8, 8:30pm - Paepcke Auditorium back to top
NEW VIEWS Bill Cunningham New York	“We all get dressed for Bill,” says Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Bill Cunningham is an 80-year-old New York Times photographer and unlikely man-about-town. With two weekly columns in the Style section, he captures fashion icons, style on the streets, and the “New York Society” charity whirl populated by the likes of Tom Wolfe, David Rockefeller, and Brooke Astor, among others. Far from simple picture taking, this is cultural anthropology at its sartorial best. It took filmmakers Richard Press and Philip Gefter seven years to convince the intensely private Cunningham to be filmed. He has lived in the same small studio above Carnegie Hall for 50 years, never eats in restaurants, and gets around on a worn-out bicycle. Pointing his camera whenever beauty crosses his path, Cunningham has managed to create a poignant and ongoing chronicle of the intersection of fashion and society for over 50 years — in effect, a portrait of New York City itself. (84 min.) Director Richard Press and producer Philip Gefter in post-screening conversation. Monday July 19, 8pm - Paepcke Auditorium back to top
NEW VIEWS Waste Land	Equal parts surprise and inspiration, director Lucy Walker’s stunning Waste Land follows celebrated Brazilian artist Vik Muniz on his journey to a most unusual studio site. Muniz works a large social canvas, creating photographic images of people using found materials from the places where they live and work. This latest project takes him to Rio de Janiero and Jardim Gramacho, one of the largest garbage dumps in the world. There he photographs and collaborates with an eclectic band of catadores, local pickers of recyclable materials. Together they embark on a fascinating project, sharing their stories and creating an extraordinary body of work that’s as vibrant and monumentally beautiful and dignified as the subjects. Audience Award Winner at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals earlier this year, Waste Land celebrates art’s transformative power and the richness of the human spirit. (98 min.) Director Lucy Walker in post-screening conversation. Monday July 26, 8pm - Paepcke Auditorium back to top
NEW VIEWS The Woodmans	Delicately constructed and poignantly elegiac, The Woodmans is an intimate portrait of a family whose guiding ethos was making art – all the time. Family patriarch George is a professor and painter. Betty is a ceramicist who earned her own show at The Metropolitan Museum. Their son Charlie is a video artist. But the breakout talent was daughter Francesca, one of the late 20th century’s most recognized photographers, whose work is collected by major museums and acknowledged as an inspiration for contemporary fashion photography. Her gift emerged in a highly developed way at a very young age only to end tragically early. Through candid interviews with family and friends, journal entries, performance art videos, and Francesca’s photographs, director C. Scott Willis brings to life this young visionary and her impact on her family. Recent Tribeca Film Festival award-winner, this debut feature plumbs the depths of what it truly means to be an artist. (82 min.) Director C. Scott Willis in post-screening conversation. Monday August 2, 8pm - Paepcke Auditorium back to top
NEW VIEWS Freakonomics	In this lively screen adaptation of economist Steven D. Levitt and author Stephen J. Dubner’s best-seller, an omnibus of powerhouse directors tackles provocative material for a singular cinematic experience. Alex Gibney (Casino Jack and the United States of Money) delivers a visually arresting look at the crumbling facade of Sumo wrestling. Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) offers a revealing angle on the repercussions of baby names. Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp) balance levity and candor with their eye-opening profile of an unusual learning incentive. Finally, Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) investigates why crime rates dramatically dropped in the early ’90s. This fascinating interpretation of human behavior by the numbers adds up to a revelatory trip into complex, innovative ideas and altered perspectives on how people think. (85 min.) Producer Chad Troutwine in post-screening conversation. Monday August 9, 8pm - Paepcke Auditorium back to top

Download CineFiles here

Formic
DIR: Roman Kaelin  Germany, 4 min. Live Action, North American Premiere, Student

Q&A
DIR: Mike & Tim Rauch  USA, 4 min. Animation/Documentary 

Director's Statement
Outside of entertaining the audience, the most important purpose of film for children and their families is to inform them and encourage them to think about the outside world and themselves. Media for kids should engage and respect them as intelligent people. This tells children that their thoughts, their ideas, and their lives matter. It shows parents and adults that listening closely to what kids have to say is one of the most important things they can do. 

In Q&A, the ideas above are shown in action within the film itself. Twelve-year-old Joshua asks his mother, Sarah, probing questions and gets honest and open answers in return. The dialogue that results helps him grapple with questions of fairness, his mother’s love for him, and his place in the wider world. As the audience witnesses this exchange, hopefully they will grow in their understanding of Joshua and Sarah and be encouraged to have their own conversations with friends and loved ones.

Flowerpots
DIR: Rafael Sommerhalder  United Kingdom/Switzerland, 5 min. Animation, U.S. Premiere, Student

Franswa Sharl
DIR: Hannah Hilliard  Australia, 14 min. Live Action, North American Premiere
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
Franswa Sharl is a story about a twelve-year-old boy who, on holidays with two families in Fiji reinvents himself as a French girl so he can enter the Miss Fiji beauty contest – much to his father’s dismay. This film is based on a true story and explores themes of identity, parental-child struggle and emerging sexuality. This story is framed in the foreign but colorful landscape of a Fijian resort in 1980.

The inspiration for the film came from a documentary I made about a gay marriage in South Africa. While interviewing Greg Logan’s family, the story of his childhood reinvention as Miss Fiji emerged. At the time he was focused on the revelation of his marriage to his family through the documentary, but I kept on his case until he agreed to work with me to develop a fictionalized account of his experience into a short drama script. I was captured by the charismatic and vibrant nature of the film’s lead character and the magical world of an exotic environment. I knew this would make a great short film!

This story appealed to me because it was warm, funny and real.  I had made a lot of dark themed high drama short films and was very keen to make a film that was tonally light-hearted and entertaining but which also had an emotional depth to it. I knew that this would be a challenge but I felt that this was the perfect story to put to the test. Franswa Sharl has a fairytale feel to it. Although the darker side to the story relies on the underlying conflict of parental-child relations that to add to the tension and texture of the story, overall the mood of this film is uplifting and one that ends on a winning note.

Alma
DIR: Rodrigo Blaas  Spain/USA, 6 min. Animation

Only One Boss
DIR: Ellen Brodsky  USA, 10 min. Documentary, World Premiere
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
What we hope we’ll get isn’t always what we get.  Not in filmmaking, not in romance, and not in raising kids.  But that’s when the fun really starts.  Eleven years ago, I thought I’d make a film about kids, communication, and language.  I filmed two children, my daughter Mia and her friend, in the playground.  Six months later, I’d show them the video – and with their newly acquired language skills they would explain what they were thinking and doing.  That’s not what happened.  Rather, we watched them fight and make up and fight again.

So I threw the tapes in the back of the closet and gave up. I didn’t get what I thought I’d get.  Eight years later, I looked at the tapes and realized the two children were communicating quite well with one another.  In fact, they looked and sounded a bit like couples everywhere. Just when we think we have something to teach kids, they often teach us.  This time, reminding us how naturally we want to lead the games we play in relationships, how often we don’t get to be the only one in charge, and how not to give up.

Math Test
DIR: Jung Yumi  South Korea, 2 min. Animation, North American Premiere


Nico's Challenge
DIR: Steve Audette  USA/Tanzania, 15 min. Documentary

Director's Statement
Coming of age films have a timeless appeal to the heartstrings of us all. There is a unique mix of joy and sadness as we remember having been there ourselves.  In the film, Nico's Challenge, this maybe felt even greater as Nico struggles and overcomes his own handicaps. I knew I wanted to make this film when I read the story in our local Concord, Massachusetts paper. I was delighted to discover that Nico's father, a long time photographer, shot footage of the climb. One look at the rushes and I knew I had a great film. In an age where men are negatively portrayed in most media outlets, my films give witness to men (and women) in a much more positive light.


A Happier Note
DIR: Hannah Planalp  USA, 4 min.  Live Action

Download CineFiles here

7:57 AM-PM
DIR: Simon Lelouch  France, 11 min. Documentary 

Director's Statement
On January 12th, 2007, Joshua Bell, one of the world’s best musicians, played one of the greatest classical masterpieces on a 1713 Stradivarius in the Washington subway.

Forty-five minutes later, over a thousand people had walked by him yet he received only a few dollars for his musical efforts.

On May 25th, 2009, his French counterpart, Renaud Capuçon, decided to take part in this film by interpreting Gluck’s masterpiece "La Mélodie d’Orphée" on a 1737 Guarnerius nicknamed "le Vicomte de Panette" on Line 6 of the Paris metro.

At the end of the day, over eighteen thousand people had passed him by and his final haul was an only few euros.

Two days later, he gave a sold-out concert at the prestigious Theatre des Champs- Elysées in Paris.


The History of Aviation
DIR: Bálint Kenyeres  France/Hungary, 15 min.  Live Action, North American Premiere

Director's Statement
The idea for this film started about three or so years ago. We were working on a script with writer Tamás Beregi, an old friend of mine from university with whom we have been writing a feature film for some time now that we are just about to finish... anyway, me and Tamás were in the middle of writing and I remember it didn't go too well that day. To ease the pressure, we took a 5-minute break. I was lying on the couch while he was pacing up and down the room, and I told him about a short film idea I had always wanted to make. It had nothing to do with the story of The History of Aviation, but using it as a starting point, in about 10 minutes there we were, hammering out the main idea of this film.

It was the story itself that drew me to the 1900's because, to be perfectly honest, in the beginning I was slightly apprehensive of making a movie in that period. I was wondering how this world of frocks and frills, picnics and pink-laced parasols would work visually. Personally, I am much more into the twenties and the thirties of the twentieth century, or even the First World War years; the feature film I am working on right now takes place in that era, in Berlin. While making The History of Aviation, I was consciously trying to tone down the schmaltzy, pretty-pretty world those frocks and frills would instantly evoke. With cinematographer Mátyás Erdély, we tried to make sure that we balanced this world with coldness and distance properly. This distance was also inherent in the story itself, and we enter the viewpoint of the mother and the little girl only. Everything else is shown and touched upon from the outside. Luckily for us, in this film the backdrop, Nature itself, is completely indifferent in the face of human concerns and tragedies. No sentimentality. You look around in a place like this and you realize you are worth no more than any pebble on the shore.

Moore Street Masala
DIR: David O'Sullivan  Ireland, 6 min. Live Action, U.S. Premiere

Director's Statement
I was one of those Irish expat kids who grew up in the Middle East in the 1980’s. In our house Indian films were compulsory TV viewing on Friday nights. Arranged marriages, unrequited love, violence, death and slapstick comedy were part of everyday life and didn’t seem so unusual. Since that time Bollywood has gone global and there has been an explosion of films within the Indian Diaspora internationally. Moore Street Masala is perhaps part of that except it’s an Irish director doing his take on Indian cinema in a Dublin setting. What matters to me is that we have taken Irish culture someplace else and aspired to be part of the Bollywood/Indian cinema tradition. By the way, I have never known any films to be so singularly manic, innocent and incredible as those Friday night Indian films.

The Cage
DIR: Adrian Sitaru  Romania/The Netherlands, 17 min. Live Action, North American Premiere
*Filmmakers expected

The Da Vinci Timecode
DIR: Gil Alkabetz  Germany, 3 min. Animation, Student


Kavi
DIR: Gregg Helvey  India/USA, 19 min. Drama, Student
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
I was shocked to learn that 27 million people around the world are enslaved today. As I began to research and understand the extent of modern slavery, I knew that I had to make a movie about it. People had to know. Kavi is my USC thesis film. It’s a 19-minute fictional film about a young boy in India who wants more out of life than work… Kavi wants to play cricket and go to school, but instead he is forced to work in a brick kiln as a modern-day salve. Kavi will be the first fictional film of its kind to expose the reality of ‘bonded labor,’ a form of modern slavery. My goal is to reach at least 50,000 people with Kavi in the first year. The purpose is to motivate action through awareness. To such an end, I will collaborate with anti-slavery organizations that will link viewers to actual steps they can take to help end slavery. Additionally, this short film is the  springboard to a feature length version for theatrical distribution. I hope you enjoy this story and are moved to action.


My Way
DIR: Veljko Popović  Croatia, 7 min. Animation, North American Premiere

Director's Statement
This film is a adaptation of a book written and illustrated by Svjetlan Junakovic. The main goal during production was to animate and composite drawings in such a way to keep the original look of paintings as much as possible.


The Mourning of the Merry Stork
DIR: Eileen Hofer-Boutros  Lebanon/Switzerland, 14 min. Live Action, North American Premiere

Director's Statement
The story is inspired by the interview I did of my father and mother a year ago in Geneva. They are now divorced but when my mother was pregnant with me they had to  escape from the war in Lebanon in order to reach Switzerland where my father actually comes from. I did not want to fall into sentimentalism in this film. I just wanted to show some details of this day. After 33 years, my parents where not able to remember everything about this period it was nice to see how their perception was different. They remembered details without importance sometimes. The not moving camera and the passivity of the protagonists insist on the fact that they were not aware of the real importance of situation at that time. You always think that this could not happened to you. I wanted this story to happen in 1975 but also in 2006 (last war) it can be in Lebanon or somewhere else. It could be my parents or just some other parents.

Franswa Sharl
DIR: Hannah Hilliard  Australia, 14 min. Live Action, North American Premiere
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
Franswa Sharl is a story about a twelve-year-old boy who, on holidays with two families in Fiji reinvents himself as a French girl so he can enter the Miss Fiji beauty contest – much to his father’s dismay. This film is based on a true story and explores themes of identity, parental-child struggle and emerging sexuality. This story is framed in the foreign but colorful landscape of a Fijian resort in 1980.

The inspiration for the film came from a documentary I made about a gay marriage in South Africa. While interviewing Greg Logan’s family, the story of his childhood reinvention as Miss Fiji emerged. At the time he was focused on the revelation of his marriage to his family through the documentary, but I kept on his case until he agreed to work with me to develop a fictionalized account of his experience into a short drama script. I was captured by the charismatic and vibrant nature of the film’s lead character and the magical world of an exotic environment. I knew this would make a great short film!

This story appealed to me because it was warm, funny and real.  I had made a lot of dark themed high drama short films and was very keen to make a film that was tonally light-hearted and entertaining but which also had an emotional depth to it. I knew that this would be a challenge but I felt that this was the perfect story to put to the test. Franswa Sharl has a fairytale feel to it. Although the darker side to the story relies on the underlying conflict of parental-child relations that to add to the tension and texture of the story, overall the mood of this film is uplifting and one that ends on a winning note.

Download CineFiles here

Ramlod
DIR: Maya Tiberman  Israel, 10 min. Drama, North American Premiere, Student

Heat
DIR: Debbie Tucker Green  United Kingdom, 13 min. Live Action, North American Premiere

Director's Statement
The parts with the children were the greatest challenge as it was not only important to get the best possible talent on screen but to cast actors who looked as if they all came from the same family. After a day of open workshops, a number of children called back for more formal auditions. From that process, newcomers Rahim Marcelle and Shameria Brown were cast. It was a complete – but lucky – coincidence that the two children already knew each other from their drama club as the bonding helped give a greater sense of a sibling relationship on screen.

The montage shots of London were key to the look and feel of the film but were tricky to schedule into the - already stretched - three day shoot. Undaunted, Debbie and DoP Stephan Pehrsson acted as a standby crew, ready at short notice to capture the necessary shots of the city and its population on a scorching summer’s day.  If the forecast was good, Debbie and Stephan were out there, chasing around London, shooting as much footage as they could get. 

The three day main shoot was scheduled for the end of June/early July. The long term forecasts weren’t too bad but as the shoot days got closer it begun to emerge that London was heading for a mini-heatwave. And so it was that Heat was shot on the three hottest days of 2009, in temperatures of 32 degrees.


Fences
DIR: Tim Dean  Australia, 7 min. Drama, North American Premiere
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
Fences is a film about how adults can lose sight of how much damage they can do to their children when they communicate through anger. The script was very strong to begin with and I wanted to give the visual style extra gravitas without losing subtlety. All the performances carry this same weight yet subtlety. Playing each moment for its truth and reality, nothing more, nothing less. The cinematography is very punchy with deep blacks and over cranked, strong colors for the child to inhabit on screen, the world through his eyes, so bold and alive. Our protagonist is merely a boy in a large world trying to understand what is happening around him. His reaction at the end of the picture is a deep but freeing release that he simply can’t control. His parents however know why he has reacted so strongly and this jolts them out of their anger. The final moments of this film will hopefully reach out to audiences in a way that they can empathize with the situation completely. A universal reaction to innocence being damaged.


Wings and Oars
DIR: Vladimir Leschiov  Latvia, 6 min. Animation

Glenn Owen Dodds
DIR: Frazer Bailey  Australia, 16 min. Live Action, North American Premiere

Director's Statement
Everything I have done in my career has led me to this film.

When writer Trent Dalton pitched me the idea for Glenn Owen Dodds I got so excited I told him to go away right then and there and start writing the script. We worked together for over a year making sure the script was perfect: every word; every dramatic turn; every gesture that formed this curious character, Glenn Owen Dodds.

The expertise of Producer, Bec Dakin and generous funding from Screen Australia has ensured that Glenn Owen Dodds is now a reality.

With a mesmerizing performance from one of Australia’s most accomplished actors, David Wenham (Australia, 300, Lord of the Rings), in the lead role of Glenn Owen Dodds, this film is an illuminating comedy for anyone who's ever asked themselves the question, 'Why am I here?'

Glenn Owen Dodds is an uplifting tale of love, faith, the meaning of life and other trivial matters. It is a universal story that is targeted toward a universal audience.


Q&A
DIR: Mike & Tim Rauch  USA, 4 min. Animation/Documentary 

Director's Statement
Outside of entertaining the audience, the most important purpose of film for children and their families is to inform them and encourage them to think about the outside world and themselves. Media for kids should engage and respect them as intelligent people. This tells children that their thoughts, their ideas, and their lives matter. It shows parents and adults that listening closely to what kids have to say is one of the most important things they can do. 

In Q&A, the ideas above are shown in action within the film itself. Twelve-year-old Joshua asks his mother, Sarah, probing questions and gets honest and open answers in return. The dialogue that results helps him grapple with questions of fairness, his mother’s love for him, and his place in the wider world. As the audience witnesses this exchange, hopefully they will grow in their understanding of Joshua and Sarah and be encouraged to have their own conversations with friends and loved ones.

The Queen
DIR: Christina Choe  USA, 8 min. Live Action, Student

Director's Statement
This film is about Bobby’s sexual awakening, as he fantasizes about dancing with the prom queen’s boyfriend in the dry cleaners. While writing the film, I imagined a contemporary update to an 80’s John Hughes movie, this time from the point of view of a closed gay Korean-American outcast who is invisible at his high school.

Home Is Where You Find It
DIR: Alcides Soares  USA/Mozambique, 27 min. Documentary

Director Biography
Alcides Soares was seventeen years old when he directed Home Is Where You Find It.  He was chosen by American TV writer and executive producer, Neal Baer (ER, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) and director Christopher Zalla (Sundance award winning Padre Neustros) to make a film about his life as an AIDS orphan, searching to find a family after his parents have died.  Alcides lives in Maputo, Mozambique and is finishing high school.  He plans to study filmmaking and architecture in college.

TICKETS - ON SALE NOW

All Shows – Aspen + Carbondale

Aspen Show Tickets at the Wheeler Box Office

320 E. Hyman Ave., Aspen

970 920 5770

www.aspenshowtickets.com

cash, check or charge

*Service fee applies for web and phone orders.

*Tickets for Carbondale shows available at door 30 minutes prior to show time.

If you'd like to enjoy even further discounts year-round, consider becoming a Reel People member. For more information, contact Allison Levy at  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 970.925.6882, ext 305.

Student Discounts

For Students 18 & younger.  Tickets available at the Wheeler Box Office only (No web or phone orders). Must present valid school ID, driver’s license or permit.

$9  Advance Ticket

$8 Student “Rush” Ticket*

*Sold 5 minutes before show time on a “space available” basis.

For student group rates & other information contact 970 925 6882 x302.

VENUES

ASPEN
Wheeler Opera House
320 East Hyman Avenue

CARBONDALE
Crystal Theatre
427 Main Street

GENERAL INFORMATION

• General Admission $12.
• Doors open 30 minutes prior to each show in Aspen and Carbondale. 
• Your ticket guarantees a seat up to 10 MINUTES prior to each show.
• In the event of a sell out, unclaimed seats will be released.
• In the event of a sellout, a wait list begins 30 minutes prior to show time.
• Programs subject to change without notice.
• No ticket refunds or exchanges.
• Please notify the Wheeler Opera House by March 26th of any special needs covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

MEMBERSHIP - STILL TIME TO GET TICKET DISCOUNTS FOR SHORTSFEST!

Join REEL PEOPLE, Aspen Film's dynamic membership program. With your tax-deductible membership, you will enjoy exclusive benefits year-round including:

• Festival passes & reserved seats
• Advance ticket discounts
• Priority ticket purchasing
• Isis & Crystal Theatre discount tickets
• "Members Only" event invitations

Memberships at every level offer affordable entertainment and support Aspen Film's slate of festivals, film series, and film education programs that serve our community year-round.

SIGN UP TODAY
call 970.925.6882, ext. 305, or email Allison Levy at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Coming soon!

6:00pm - Wheeler Opera House 320 East Hyman Ave. $12
Program runs 80 min. This presentation is appropriate for ages 13+
Program subject to change. Play order to be announced.

Australia’s most prestigious shorts festival is also one of its most iconic cultural happenings. What started in 1993 as a screening at a Sydney cafe now attracts a live audience of more than 150,000 on a single night, not to mention 300,000 television viewers. The entry rules are simple: Films are created specifically for Tropfest, run no longer than seven minutes, and include the Tropfest Signature Item (e.g., the 2010 TSI was dice). A hit at Shortsfest 2005, Tropfest returns with a selection of favorites from the past few years.

2006 / Tropfest Signature Item (TSI) – BUBBLE

CARMICHAEL AND SHANE A single father has a unique approach to raising his two year old twin boys – pick a favorite. Winner, Tropfest 2006. (Alex Weinress & Rob Carlton direct.)

2007 / TSI – SNEEZE

	AN IMAGINARY LIFE For an imaginary friend… Living an imaginary life… There’s nothing worse than being forgotten.  Winner, Tropfest 2007. (Steve Baker directs.)
	ROAD RAGE One morning, in busy peak hour traffic, two motorist's lives collide in a near traffic accident. One driver, shaken and angry, watches as his fellow commuter speeds away without acknowledgment or apology for the near miss. He decides to chase him down in a quest for revenge. Second Prize, Tropfest 2007. (Mark Bellamy directs.)

2008 / TSI - 8

	GREAT WHITE HUNTERS Great White Hunters What do you need to hunt the world’s greatest hunter? How about some fishing line and a six-pack? Third Prize, Tropfest 2008. (Gary Doust directs.)
	MARRY ME Little girl likes little boy. Little boy likes BMX bikes. Something has to give. Winner, Tropfest 2008. (Michelle Lehman directs.)
	UNCLE JONNY Uncle Jonny is the best mate of a seven-year old who is daydreaming during class. Second Prize, Tropfest 2008. (Mark Constable)

2009 / TSI - SPRING

	BE MY BROTHER A young man's charm and charisma challenge the prejudices of a stranger at a bus stop. While he impacts her world, he also changes the heart and mind of someone else close by. Winner, Tropfest 2009. (Genevieve Clay directs.)
	BEYOND WORDS A thriller switching between two unique points of view, exploring the idea that no matter what our perception of life, anything’s possible. (Armand de Saint-Salvy  directs.)

2010 / TSI – DICE

	FALLING BACKWARDS A man stands naked and alone in his torn apart living room. A kitchen knife lies limp amongst the broken glass on his floor. How can unraveling the pieces help change what has already happened? Can regret overcome fate? (Harrison Murray directs.)
	FISH LIPS A story about love, about family, fish fingers and a game called Yahtzee! (Duane Fogwell directs.)
	HAPPENSTANCE Grey is a young woman lost beyond hope. Jilted, depressed and alone, she makes a life-ending decision on Valentines Day, when a hapless singing bear-o-gram changes the course of events. (John Marsh directs.)
	MY NEIGHBOURHOOD HAS BEEN OVERRUN BY BABOONS What if you woke up one morning and your neighborhood had been overrun by baboons? What if there was nothing you could do and nowhere to hide? Second Prize, Tropfest 2010. (Cameron Edser & Michael Richards direct.)

10:30am - Venue to be determined
Program runs 75 min. This presentation is appropriate for ages 11+
Program subject to change. Play order to be announced.

Rediscover movies and expand your appreciation of film in a conversation with Aspen Film’s programming team. We’ll view selections from this year’s shorts and discuss the visual techniques and creative choices the filmmakers have made to tell their stories. This special presentation is for Aspen Film Reel People members only. RSVP required.

3:00pm - Wheeler Opera House 320 East Hyman Ave. FREE
Filmmakers expected. Program runs 75 min. This presentation is appropriate for ages 16+
Program subject to change. Play order to be announced.

Shows are at 5:30 and 8:00pm - Crystal Theatre 427 Main St. - Carbondale  $12
Filmmakers expected. Program runs 100 min. Competition Program B is appropriate for ages 13+
Program subject to change. Play order to be announced.  For additional film information please see the Program B CineFiles.

7:57 AM-PM	Is true musicianship universally appreciated? A trip to the Paris Métro considers the question. (Simon Lelouch, France, 11 min.)  Read more...
The History of Aviation	In this luminous period piece set in 1905, a group of seaside picnickers assembles for one last photograph, until they realize someone is missing. (Bálint Kenyeres, France/Hungary, 15 min.) Read more...
Moore Street Masala	When a Dublin shop clerk falls for the sexy estate agent across the road, it’s true love, Bollywood style. (David O’Sullivan, Ireland, 6 min.) Read more...
The Cage	An injured bird adds a new emotional dimension to a strained father-son relationship. From the director of Waves (SF08). (Adrian Sitaru, Romania/Netherlands, 17 min.)  Read more...
The Da Vinci Timecode	Parts of a famous painting come to “life” in this visually inventive tableau. (Gil Alkabetz, Germany, 3 min.)  Read more...
Kavi	Young Kavi wants more out of life than laboring at an Indian brick kiln with his family. He dreams instead of going to school and playing cricket. A compelling treatment of a timely topic. (Gregg Helvey, India/USA, 19 min.) Read more...
My Way	A whimsical tale about the invisible pebble that nudges us through life and brings awareness, told through the perspective of shoes. (Veljko Popović, Croatia, 7 min.) Read more...
The Mourning of the Merry Stork	Lebanon, 1982. As political tensions mount, a young professor and his wife plan to flee their country, little realizing what they are about to leave behind. From the director of Roots (SF09). (Eileen Hofer-Boutros, Lebanon/Switzerland, 14 min.) Read more...
Franswa Sharl	Keeping the position of number-one son drives 12-year-old Greg to take some amusingly ingenious measures on a family vacation. (Hannah Hilliard, Australia, 14 min.)  Read more...

Shows are at 5:30 and 8:00pm - Crystal Theatre 427 Main St. - Carbondale  $12
Filmmakers expected. Program runs 100 min. Competition Program A is appropriate for ages 13+
Program subject to change. Play order to be announced.  For additional film information please see the Program A CineFiles.

Ramlod	When her car runs out of gas, a young Israeli photographer finds herself stranded in the wrong part of town. What follows is an eye-opening guided tour. (Maya Tiberman, Israel, 10 min.) Read more...
Heat	It’s the hottest day of the year in London, and Donna finally agrees to share a long-held secret with her skeptical partner. (Debbie Tucker Green, UK, 13 min.) Read more...
Fences	Accompanying his father to work, a young boy discovers that the world is more complicated than he ever imagined. (Tim Dean, Australia, 7 min.)  Read more...
Wings and Oars	In this wistfully evocative animation, a former pilot reflects on his life’s journey and the stops along the way. From the director of Lost in Snow (SF08). (Vladimir Leschiov, Latvia, 6 min.) Read more...
Glenn Owen Dodds	An illuminating comedy about an ordinary man who meets an extraordinary man and discovers nothing less than the meaning of life. (Frazer Bailey, Australia, 16 min.)  Read more...
Q&A	When Joshua interviewed his mother for the oral history project StoryCorps, their one-of-a-kind conversation covered everything from cockroaches to some poignant revelations. (Mike & Tim Rauch, USA, 4 min.) Read more...
The Queen	One customer’s last-minute request unleashes a nerdy clerk’s imagination in this sweet tale of dry cleaning, prom night, and fitting in. (Christina Choe, USA, 8 min.) Read more...
Home Is Where You Find It	The human faces of AIDS in Africa are movingly captured in this personal documentary by 16-year-old Alcides Soares, who chronicles his story as a teenaged orphan rebuilding his family, with a camera and advice from two professional filmmakers. (Alcides Soares, USA/Mozambique, 27 min.)  Read more...

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Battered
DIR: Louise de Prémonville  France, 16 min. Live Action, North American Premiere

Director's Statement
Louise de Prémonville is a film Editor. She worked with Kartik Singh on the short film Saving Mom and Dad, and with Pierre Hodgson on many documentaries (Daddy, Daddy USA).

Her screenplay for Battered won the First prize of the Screenplay contest of Moulin d’Andé in 2007. Battered is her first film as director.


The Art of Drowning
DIR: Diego Maclean  Canada, 2 min. Animation


Banana Bread
DIR: Barton Landsman  USA, 9 min. Live Action

Director's Statement
This film comes from personal experience (the worried mother part, not the cold-blooded killer part). For most of my adult life, I’ve found charm and humor in the fact that my mom still worries about me and isn’t bashful about sharing motherly advice. And that’s true no matter how old I get and no matter what I do. So I thought it would be fun to extend that idea to a pretty absurd and bloody extreme.


Green Sea
DIR: Ignacio Busquier  Argentina, 15 min. Documentary, U.S. Premiere

Director's Statement
Green Sea is a documentary about tea, but also on those small everyday aspects surrounding this crop. The documentary captures the essence of the work with the tea, as a way of life. The characters speak and present from their activity and the camera follows them into their routine. As the documentary progresses, the process of tea is being set aside, and come to front the characters and their expectations.


The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger
DIR: Bill Plympton  USA, 4 min. Animation

Cigarette Candy
DIR: Lauren Wolkstein  USA, 13 min. Live Action, Student

Director's Statement
Cigarette Candy tells the story of Eddie Van Buren, a traumatized teenage marine who is forced to play the role of 'the hero' at his homecoming party. In pursuing a rebellious, precocious sixteen‐year‐old girl, Candy, he sees an opportunity to numb his pain and connect to a fellow lost soul. This film is a contemporary story about the individual’s war that takes place emotionally and psychologically when subjected to physical war with the world. My father, Andrew I. Wolkstein, a colonel in the Air Force, was in charge of several teenage airmen when he served in Iraq. He witnessed firsthand how war not only affects the soldier, but the man inside the uniform. I wanted to tell this story through my own personal connection with how war affects loved ones coming home. The stories my father recounts, as many other voices in the 20th and 21st centuries, are not traditional “war stories” of explosions  but rather stories of disembodiment, disengagement, and isolation. Each time my father tells me a story or I read of a new wartime iniquity, I am reminded that warfare is not just physical—it’s psychological, emotional, and visceral—and that war in the 21st century is a new strain of trauma and destruction. Cigarette Candy is not a war story, but a story of lost innocence – a boy forced too  soon into adulthood. However, it is also about the hope that exists in unexpected places, even when it seems that all hope is lost forever. This story is for everyone who has ever been to war, for those whose loved ones have come back irrevocably changed, and for everyone who has ever given war a second thought.


Pigeon: Impossible
DIR: Lucas Martell  USA, 6  min. Animation
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
Production on the film spanned for nearly 5 years and is the first attempt at animation by writer/director Lucas Martell: “When the project started, it was really just an excuse to learn 3D animation, but by the end of the project I had spent so much time reworking and polishing the story that I just wanted people to laugh.”

The end result is a hilarious 6-minute romp through the streets of Washington D.C. as our hero fights to save himself, and the world from the chaos reigned down by a hungry pigeon. Breathtaking visuals and a sweeping soundtrack showcase the work of nearly one-hundred talented artists and musicians, and the film stands as a testament to what can be accomplished by a team of dedicated volunteers working for the love of their craft.

Is This Your Limb?
DIR: Michael Ramsey  USA, 1 min. Live Action
*Filmmakers expected

Director Biography
Michael Ramsey began his film career in 1999 as an underwater cameraman filming bottlenose dolphins and bull sharks daily. His career has continued in atypical fashion. His company Spoken Image has produced network series, independent documentaries, branded content and commercials in 15 countries, often in very remote locations and under challenging circumstances.

Michael's company Spoken Image produces for clients that include The Discovery Channel, PBS, Comedy Central, AT&T, Continuity NY, MTV, Ambrose Video, and several independent documentary productions.  Awards include Sundance Audience Award 2009 and the Academy Award for Best Documentary for The Cove (Michael was a producer and camera operator), First Place Best Animation at the USA Film Festival for Plato's Allegory of the Cave (this film has won almost 20 film festival awards to date), as well as several awards for branded content, television and advertising.

Roar
DIR: Adam Wimpenny  United Kingdom, 16 min. Live Action


Wolves
DIR: Rafael Sommerhalder  United Kingdom/Switzerland, 6 min. Animation, North American Premiere, Student

God of Love
DIR: Luke Matheny  USA, 18 min. Live Action, World Premiere, Student

Director's Statement
As someone who has had more than his share of unrequited crushes on various unsuspecting girls throughout the years, I was eager to tell a story that celebrates unrequited love. But as someone who can now recognize his earlier crushes as – well, let’s be honest -- absurd exercises in delusion, I was also determined to critique the image of the lovestruck hero. I thought a dramatic simple triangle – boy likes girl, girl likes boy’s best friend, boy’s best friend doesn’t like girl – would afford me the chance to explore these themes in a compelling and entertaining way. Throw in some magic, some laughs, a jazz score and a stylish B&W look inspired by 1950s jazz photography and French New Wave, and you have the kind of movie that I, for one, would love to see. So now I present God of Love with the nervous hope that it’s the kind of movie that someone else might love to see, too.

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Wings and Oars
DIR: Vladimir Leschiov  Latvia, 6 min. Animation 


When the Rain Comes
DIR: Jade Bell  United Kingdom, 14 min. Live Action, North American Premiere

Director's Statement
When the Rain Comes was inspired by my own experience with divorce as a child. I have always been fascinated by female intuition, in particular my mother’s, and wondered what would have happened had her innate abilities failed her. Would things have turned out differently?  I wanted to demonstrate how roles in parent/child relationships often reverse during difficult times – in this case the concept of “mothering your mother”. I also wanted to convey the uncomfortable and disappointing moment, when we as children, learn that our parents aren’t “perfect”… but human.  Shot over four nights in London, our minimal but highly dedicated cast and crew happily suffered the rain and cold to help me realize my first film, to which I am eternally grateful.


Sunday's Best
DIR: Marlon Johnson, Chad Tingle, Dennis Scholl  USA, 6 min. Documentary 
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
Miami Program Director for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Co-Producer of this film, Dennis Scholl conceived the original vision of this project. He was inspired by a series of community Gospel concerts held by the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County. He was especially taken with the ornate and elaborate headdresses worn by the women.  He then teamed up with Co-Directors Marlon Johnson and Chad Tingle who over the course of several months visited many of the African-American churches within the Miami community.  Through their rich experiences with the worship, song and pageantry of these churches, they further enhanced the vision into a compelling story of the history, pride and honor of wearing your Sunday’s Best.


Capture the Flag
DIR: Lisanne Skyler  USA, 14 min. Live Action, World Premiere
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
I have always been fascinated by secret lives within a family, what the teenagers do when the adults aren’t around, what the adults do when they think the kids aren’t watching.

Capture the Flag is a portrayal of a particular moment in a teenager’s life, when she steps from childhood into the unknown and mutable world beyond. I wanted to steal a glimpse at the secret life of a teenaged girl growing up in the turbulent 1970s, when the once-clear lines between parents and children began to blur. I wanted to explore a specific heartbreak of coming of age, when suddenly, as if out of nowhere things are changing, severing us from the ties and traditions that we depend on.

The film was shot in black and white 16mm, influenced by the photography and films of Robert Frank, and the films of Shirley Clarke.


The Queen
DIR: Christina Choe  USA, 8 min. Live Action, Student
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
This film is about Bobby’s sexual awakening, as he fantasizes about dancing with the prom queen’s boyfriend in the dry cleaners. While writing the film, I imagined a contemporary update to an 80’s John Hughes movie, this time from the point of view of a closed gay Korean-American outcast who is invisible at his high school.

Standing 8
DIR: Taylor Phillips  USA, 4 min. Live Action, World Premiere
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
The concept for the film Standing 8 was inspired by several of the Boxers and Mixed Martial Artists I have trained with, and fought, over the past 10 years.  Like me, none of them are, and never will be professional.  Many of the fighters I learned from came from broken homes, sons of gang members, and heroin addicts.  Fighting kept them clean, and out of gangs and out of prison.  With so much anger in their lives I always marveled how we could beat the tar out of each other for hours on end and still remain the best of friends afterward. For me Standing 8 is a chance to explore the choice between the primal urge for revenge and the knowledge that revenge can destroy you. 

My producer Anisa Qureshi, (also my fiancé) assembled a crew of talented professionals many of them good friends. We shot the majority of the film in Los Angeles in over the course of one amazing day.  We found our incredibly talented cast through friends as well, and were fortunate to meet our gang members at an ex con training organization in downtown LA.  My younger brother Ben contributed the gorgeous time lapse footage which was shot here in the Roaring Fork Valley.

Mother of Many
DIR: Emma Lazenby  United Kingdom, 6 min. Animation, North American Premiere

Director's Statement
Mother of Many is a film inspired by my mum.  She was a midwife for 30 years delivering well over 3000 babies.  When she retired last year - I thought a lot about what she had achieved and made this film to celebrate the amazing work midwives do.  The film uses real recordings of childbirth and fetal heartbeats, based on the calm rhythms of the midwife and the hectic rhythms of contractions and birth.  The film was 9 months in the making and one week overdue and acted like a fertility charm to the production team.

I'm Ready
DIR: Esther Siton  Israel, 15 min. Live Action, North American Premiere, Student

Director's Statement
There are two predominant colors in the film: brown and blue, The color brown represents Yossef's world, a measured, subdued world. His clothes and room are in shades of brown. The color blue symbolizes Ori's world, a childish world full of emotion and his room and belongings are in blue. In those shots showing routine and matters of habit, the camera is stationary. The shots with Yossef are characterized by "one shots" with soft camera movements accompanying him from the first stage before his functional decline to a later stage of cognitive decline. There the camera reveals those details that Yossef has forgotten.

For the past two years, I have been working at the Shekel Association (for people with special needs) as a carer and helper to six 40-45 year-old men who have Down Syndrome.  One day, I accompanied one of them to his father's home and his 80 year-old father was waiting for him across the road. The self-sacrifice in crossing that road towards his son, the joy and the self-sacrifice, were the inspiration for writing this screenplay.

Only One Boss
DIR: Ellen Brodsky  USA, 10 min. Documentary, World Premiere
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
What we hope we’ll get isn’t always what we get.  Not in filmmaking, not in romance, and not in raising kids.  But that’s when the fun really starts.  Eleven years ago, I thought I’d make a film about kids, communication, and language.  I filmed two children, my daughter Mia and her friend, in the playground.  Six months later, I’d show them the video – and with their newly acquired language skills they would explain what they were thinking and doing.  That’s not what happened.  Rather, we watched them fight and make up and fight again.

So I threw the tapes in the back of the closet and gave up. I didn’t get what I thought I’d get.  Eight years later, I looked at the tapes and realized the two children were communicating quite well with one another.  In fact, they looked and sounded a bit like couples everywhere. Just when we think we have something to teach kids, they often teach us.  This time, reminding us how naturally we want to lead the games we play in relationships, how often we don’t get to be the only one in charge, and how not to give up.

The Six Dollar Fifty Man
DIR: Mark Albiston, Louis Sutherland  New Zealand, 15 min. Live Action
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
Mark: When I told my kids of the time I tried to escape from Raumati Beach primary school I knew we had the bones of a good story - they asked me to tell it a lot. The interesting thing is Louis and I went to that same school back in the 70’s and when we were bouncing ideas to develop into a script he remembered the event.

Louis: Our classrooms lined the rugby field of our primary school. When this skinny little kid, that’s Mark, sprinted past our windows with two bigger boys giving chase everyone dropped their work and crowded around to watch. It sounds comical now but from a kids perspective it was a big deal.

Mark: That’s where The Six Dollar Fifty Man started.  But another inspiration was my oldest son Jude, 5, who believes he is invincible. On any given day you’ll find him climbing up something ridiculously high or leaping off the garage roof. He freaks me out but he reminded me of my warped sense of reality that I had at the same age. I used to think by hanging onto electric fences it would make me bionic (give me super strength). I would then try to lift heavy things like my mum.

Louis: We wanted to take an adult audience and suck them into a small boy’s world to see the size and weight of something that as an adult we might overlook. It gives you a good heart or core to hang things on.

Louis: Oscar was 8 years old but even then he could cut you down with a frown – he is that sharp. So when we auditioned him it was really no surprise when Oscar delivered one of the most engaging improvs we’d seen. We pretty much took him there and then and immediately started adjusting the script to accommodate for the strength of his natural character.

Mark: We are firm believers in getting the right cast. And in fact in this film we changed our story to accommodate for Andy’s girlfriend in the film Celina (Mary). When we auditioned Celina together with Oscar she was the only one who managed to match Oscar’s personality and who really felt like his friend.

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Yellow Belly End
DIR: Philip Bacon  United Kingdom, 9 min. Animation, U.S. Premiere, Student

Director's Statement
When I watch films I guess I like to discover and work hard to find its meaning and I hoped to elicit a similar response in people when they watched my short animation Yellow Belly End.  I enjoy this idea of audience interaction because everyone draws their own conclusions about what they have seen, depending on their cultural and social histories and what they brought to the film.  I like the idea that a film can be like a living thing in so far as its meaning can change depending on who sees it and when.

Then again, maybe I just hoped the idea of people in animal costumes jumping off the edge of a cliff would at least make someone somewhere smile...

Junkyard Jesús
DIR: Christoph Kuschnig  USA, 14 min. Live Action, Student
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
When my good friend Sohrab Noshirvani approached me about collaborating on a short screenplay he wrote, I was very excited. I always admired his style and was eager to direct one of his screenplays: stories about little people experiencing big moments.

One of them was Junkyard Jesús - the story of Jesús and his best friend Manny. Manny is a very compelling character - a diamond in the rough. A “real man” on the outside but sensitive inside. He cares for his best friend Jesús who is a league of his own-a wiry kid who comes to life when he is around Manny. Like brothers they have strong ties and need one another to survive-until that particular day in the story.

Exploring such a strong bond and what happens when it breaks is a challenge that intrigued me and compelled me to portray in a short. The setting – a junkyard – is a place where society disposes scrap after it stops working and cannot be fixed anymore. We were enchanted by the possibilities that are buried in such a location – visually as well as emotionally. The junkyard does not leave our thoughts - nor does the question: Did Jesús make an honest mistake or is he a restless killer?

A second Junkyard script was developed – and a third. And so a trilogy of short films was completed: three stories, three directors, one writer, one central character and one location. All shot in different styles and all subject to character study.


He'd Never Do That
DIR: Anartz Zuazua  Spain, 14 min. Live Action 

Director Biography
San Sebastián, 1973. Arnatz studied image and sound in Andoain (Gipuzkoa), and acting at the William Leyton Laboratory in Madrid and with Jacques Lecoq in Paris. In addition to working as a film, theatre and television actor, he has run various drama training courses in the Basque Country and currently directs television programs for several production companies. Él nunca lo haría (He’d Never Do That) is his first short film.


Jacob
DIR: Dena Curtis  Australia, 11 min. Drama, U.S. Premiere

Director's Statement
It’s hard to know where to begin in explaining why I wanted to make a film like Jacob.

Even though elements of this film reflect part of my family history, this story affects many Indigenous men, women and their families in Central Australia. This is a reality that is very rarely explored and even less so from the perspective of Indigenous men.

When I was writing Jacob, I chose to represent this sensitive story from the point of view of the characters who were witness to these extraordinary times. I wanted to portray on screen their emotional journeys and responses to such a distressing and awkward situation which they were left to deal with.

The first time I heard the story of how my Grandfather saved my Uncle when he was a baby, left me with all these images and thoughts running through my head. This story represented for me the kind of man that my Grandfather was.

At the time of writing Jacob, there was a lot of negative media attention towards Aboriginal men and people made the assumption that because one man can’t look after his family that all Indigenous men must be one and the same and I didn’t agree with that. I wanted to show our men in a different light, black men that work hard, looked after their families and struggled to overcome hardship. I want the audience to see proud Indigenous men and the lives they once lived.

I also wanted to examine how a young woman might deal with her life experience and also reflect on how so many Indigenous women have been through post-natal depression and dealing with the choices and decisions that they have made in their life time.

But at the end of the day and with all the reasons for making this film, reflecting back to that time, I see that what those men and women did was not always about choice but rather about their survival.

Moore Street Masala
DIR: David O'Sullivan  Ireland, 6 min. Live Action, U.S. Premiere

Director's Statement
I was one of those Irish expat kids who grew up in the Middle East in the 1980’s. In our house Indian films were compulsory TV viewing on Friday nights. Arranged marriages, unrequited love, violence, death and slapstick comedy were part of everyday life and didn’t seem so unusual. Since that time Bollywood has gone global and there has been an explosion of films within the Indian Diaspora internationally. Moore Street Masala is perhaps part of that except it’s an Irish director doing his take on Indian cinema in a Dublin setting. What matters to me is that we have taken Irish culture someplace else and aspired to be part of the Bollywood/Indian cinema tradition. By the way, I have never known any films to be so singularly manic, innocent and incredible as those Friday night Indian films.

It's Free for Girls
DIR: Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger  France, 23 min. Live Action, North American Premiere


Careful with That Power Tool
DIR: Jason Stutter   New Zealand, 2 min. Live Action

Director's Statement
We had loads of fun traumatizing audiences around the world with Careful with that Axe, so we thought... sequel. 

Careful with That Power Tool plays with the audience’s expectation of what may happen, from what they saw in the previous short, while also working as a comedic film in its own right.  Cameron is back as the mischievous boy - his Dad says it’s not exactly a stretch for him to settle into this role.  This time Cameron decided to throw in an unscripted stunt and fell off his bike - which has made its way into the cut.  Weeks earlier, Phil Burchell, the Director of Photography, broke his hip falling off his own bike, so the shoot had a wonderful accidental feel about it - fortunately we had use of a robotic crane arm and Phil could work by remote.  Perhaps we should make ‘Careful with that Bike’?

Snake Fever
DIR: Wendy Greene  USA, 12 min. Documentary, World Premiere

Director's Statement
For me, making documentaries has always been about showing one group of people how another group lives. So when I heard about rattlesnake hunters out in Oklahoma, I wanted to make a film that would explain to people like me why someone would want to hunt rattlesnakes. I took my camera and went out to Oklahoma by myself for a week to see what I would find.

Waynoka, Oklahoma is about as different from my home in New York City as I could get. The people of the tiny town welcomed me with open arms. They invited me into their homes and took me to hunt snakes. They insisted I try fried rattlesnake, showed me their best secret hunting spots, and proudly told me of their town’s sixty-year tradition of rattlesnake hunting.

I was expecting to find that this was a group of thrill-seekers looking for fun. As it turns out, rattlesnake hunting is something more important for Waynokans. It’s a way to keep the rattlesnake population in check, so that their valuable cattle don’t get bitten. But more importantly, it’s a way of carrying on a tradition of the old West. Rattlesnake hunting, with its simple, man-versus-snake stakes, and its rustic weapons, is a way of keeping the Oklahoma of the frontier days alive.

Charlotta-TS: Episode Three
DIR: Lewis Teague  USA, 10 min. Live Action
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
I wanted to learn how to shoot and market a movie on the internet so I began fishing around for a web series idea. I wanted to make a frivolous, funny movie, about serious topics.  My favorite actress, Laura Bayonas, told me about a fantasy character she always wanted to play, thus, Charlotta-TS was born. Charlotta-TS is Everyman (and Everywoman).  Her's is a universal quest - the search for identity, the search for love, and the search to survive.  Originally I was only going to make two or three episodes. However, Chatlotta-TS took on a life of its own and I quickly realized that I needed an entire season to tell the story I wanted to tell. I was having too much fun to stop.

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7:57 AM-PM
DIR: Simon Lelouch  France, 11 min. Documentary 

Director's Statement
On January 12th, 2007, Joshua Bell, one of the world’s best musicians, played one of the greatest classical masterpieces on a 1713 Stradivarius in the Washington subway.

Forty-five minutes later, over a thousand people had walked by him yet he received only a few dollars for his musical efforts.

On May 25th, 2009, his French counterpart, Renaud Capuçon, decided to take part in this film by interpreting Gluck’s masterpiece "La Mélodie d’Orphée" on a 1737 Guarnerius nicknamed "le Vicomte de Panette" on Line 6 of the Paris metro.

At the end of the day, over eighteen thousand people had passed him by and his final haul was an only few euros.

Two days later, he gave a sold-out concert at the prestigious Theatre des Champs- Elysées in Paris.

The Mourning of the Merry Stork
DIR: Eileen Hofer-Boutros  Lebanon/Switzerland, 14 min. Live Action, North American Premiere
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
The story is inspired by the interview I did of my father and mother a year ago in Geneva. They are now divorced but when my mother was pregnant with me they had to  escape from the war in Lebanon in order to reach Switzerland where my father actually comes from. I did not want to fall into sentimentalism in this film. I just wanted to show some details of this day. After 33 years, my parents where not able to remember everything about this period it was nice to see how their perception was different. They remembered details without importance sometimes. The not moving camera and the passivity of the protagonists insist on the fact that they were not aware of the real importance of situation at that time. You always think that this could not happened to you. I wanted this story to happen in 1975 but also in 2006 (last war) it can be in Lebanon or somewhere else. It could be my parents or just some other parents.

Diplomacy
DIR: Jon Goldman  USA, 9 min. Live Action
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
Diplomacy was filmed within days of the inauguration of President Barack Obama in January 2009, as the United States began a new diplomatic outreach toward the Islamic Republic of Iran. The film premiered in Paris six months later, after disputed elections in Iran cast the future of diplomatic rapprochement into doubt. The film later screened in Abu Dhabi at the Middle East Film Festival in the fall of 2009, days after the U.S. and Iran met for nuclear talks which promptly dissolved.

Diplomacy is intended as a piece of diplomacy itself – to provoke a conversation between languages and cultures which have historically been at odds. The interpreters in the film interpret diplomacy in a way that may be outrageous, unwise and have ulterior motives… But at least they’re talking.

Rita
DIR: Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza  Italy, 18 min. Live Action, North American Premiere
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
How to stage the point of view of a blind girl? How to induce in the spectator a minor experience of blindness and what it might be like to overcome it? During this short film the camera is focused on Rita, without reverse angle shots. Rita is under everyone’s gaze, the gaze of others which acts also as a controlling element, a form of surveillance. We can’t see what Rita has before her because she can’t either. For example, we see her mother’s hands flit in and out of the frame, when her mother is fussing around her, but we never see her mother. We feel the desire to see what stands before her but, for the most part of the short film, we are not granted any gratification of this desire. For Rita hearing is fundamental, and that is why the story, from her “point of view” is told through the sounds, the noises. The sounds represent what we can’t see, they evoke it, and to some extent create it. Only through an unexpected and enigmatic encounter does the staging change, because this meeting suddenly enables her to "see" and we, for the first time, are gifted with her perspective and share her vision. The film explores this brief moment of grace. Then everything goes back to normal for Rita and for us.

The Da Vinci Timecode
DIR: Gil Alkabetz  Germany, 3 min. Animation, Student

Laredo, Texas
DIR: Topaz Adizes  USA, 11 min. Live Action
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
Laredo, Texas is the final installment of a larger project entitled THE AMERICANA PROJECT. Exploring American identity in a global context, we traveled around the world exploring the issue with the final result being a feature documentary, Americana, and three shorts, City (best short short aspen 2007), Trece Años (Special Jury Mention at last year's Ashland Ind. Film Festival) and now Laredo, Texas . All the short films in essence are personal moments, with real personal issues at stake, however that speak to a larger political issue. For more information check out www.theamericanaproject.com.

Franswa Sharl
DIR: Hannah Hilliard  Australia, 14 min. Live Action, North American Premiere
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
Franswa Sharl is a story about a twelve-year-old boy who, on holidays with two families in Fiji reinvents himself as a French girl so he can enter the Miss Fiji beauty contest – much to his father’s dismay. This film is based on a true story and explores themes of identity, parental-child struggle and emerging sexuality. This story is framed in the foreign but colorful landscape of a Fijian resort in 1980.

The inspiration for the film came from a documentary I made about a gay marriage in South Africa. While interviewing Greg Logan’s family, the story of his childhood reinvention as Miss Fiji emerged. At the time he was focused on the revelation of his marriage to his family through the documentary, but I kept on his case until he agreed to work with me to develop a fictionalized account of his experience into a short drama script. I was captured by the charismatic and vibrant nature of the film’s lead character and the magical world of an exotic environment. I knew this would make a great short film!

This story appealed to me because it was warm, funny and real.  I had made a lot of dark themed high drama short films and was very keen to make a film that was tonally light-hearted and entertaining but which also had an emotional depth to it. I knew that this would be a challenge but I felt that this was the perfect story to put to the test. Franswa Sharl has a fairytale feel to it. Although the darker side to the story relies on the underlying conflict of parental-child relations that to add to the tension and texture of the story, overall the mood of this film is uplifting and one that ends on a winning note.

Born Sweet
DIR: Cynthia Wade  USA/Cambodia, 28 min. Documentary

Director's Statement

With Born Sweet, I decided to turn the typical documentary on its head by taking a standard social issue storyline and reworking it into a coming of age story. The film took this course quite naturally after meeting Vinh and his family in Prek Russei, Cambodia. Despite his being very sick with arsenic poisoning, Vinh’s story was the story of any fifteen-year-old boy trying to navigate the difficult transition between being a child and growing into an adult. His situation may have been exceptional, but his tale was universal.

Despite being shot on video, we chose to give this documentary a filmic quality to highlight the beauty of Cambodia and bring the audience fully into the experience of the village. Using an adapter with 35mm still camera lenses, we were able to give the documentary a rich visual feel normally reserved for true film stock. This was an intentional departure from my previous work, which rested firmly on gritty verité. It was a refreshing and freeing experience finally to make a “beautiful” film.

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Shotgun
DIR: Russ Lamoureux  USA, 6 min. Live Action, World Premiere

Director Biography
Russ Lamoureux is known for his nuanced approach to film, gaining recognition in the commercial and music video worlds by capturing understated, honest performances with the eye of a classic visual storyteller.

The Cage
DIR: Adrian Sitaru  Romania/The Netherlands, 17 min. Live Action, North American Premiere
*Filmmakers expected

Alma
DIR: Rodrigo Blaas  Spain/USA, 6 min. Animation

Careful with that Axe
DIR: Jason Stutter  New Zealand, 2 min. Live Action

Director's Statement
Careful with that Axe is inspired by a song written by Pink Floyd.  I listened to the song one day on my iPod and the idea for this film just kinda fell into my head.  Most of my film concepts are either comedy or horror, this idea seemed to serve both these ideals so I drew up a series of storyboards and got into production.  I hope the audience has a fun time… and screams a little.

Jason originally started in the film industry as an editor.  He has directed many short films and directed the feature film “Tongan Ninja” – co-written and starring Jemaine Clement from HBO’s “Flight of the Conchords”.  Jason’s next feature film, also a comedy horror, is currently in post production.

Plank
DIR: Billy Pols  The Netherlands, 16 min. Documentary,  North American Premiere

Director's Statement
I made Plank because I wanted to give people a glimpse of the person behind the stereotypical image of a young up-and-coming skateboarder. Nassim proves that almost every assumption about Moroccans, skaters and teenagers can be very misleading.

The Unhappy Woman
DIR: Tomas Sem Løkke-Sørensen  Norway, 5 min. Live Action, North American Premiere

Director's Statement
To challenge myself I decided to make the film with just one camera set up and with not more than two actors. In this way I had to push myself to write a decent script. Also, this film was an excellent opportunity to work closely with actors and learn something about directing.

Although I didn't have a lot of money for this project (most of the budget was for the blow up to 35 mm), two great actors signed up for the parts, both of whom are very famous in Norway.

Last, this film was shot in 1.5 hours with one day of pre-production - filmmaking isn't always a struggle.

Man and Boy
DIR: David Leon, Marcus McSweeney  United Kingdom, 20 min. Live Action, World Premiere

Director's Statement
The true story of a man being hunted down by a vigilante mob for a crime he did not commit, resulting in his death seemed such a grave injustice to us, that it was all the motivation we needed to feel passionate that this was the story we wanted to tell for our second short film.

As Directors we're motivated by story. Human emotion like that of an everyday group of people who in an instant find themselves in extraordinary circumstances and the sense that we ourselves can relate to that persons situation, coupled with the thought of what would we do in the same position, is consistently challenging and rewarding.

We wanted to keep as much of the team from our first short together as possible: Writer, DoP, Editor etc. and using cast members who we either knew or had a relationship with helped us to achieve a short hand in a very quick period of time which we felt was key to producing believable characters.

Finding a Boy who had the requisite amount of maturity but yet was believably naive for the story to hold together was difficult so when we met Callum it was a big step forward as we knew Geoff and Eddie were perfectly cast as Frank and Carson, though Alfie was always the pivot around which these characters would turn as the chain of events unfold.

Cutting non-linear was something we decided on in pre-production as we felt it was the best way to tell the story and keep the suspense. It meant although structurally changes were made in post we were all headed in the right direction from the start.

We hope that we've been respectful of the real-life events whilst never trying to represent them in any way other than dramatically. We want the audience to be left asking questions, and in a quandary as to who they should sympathize with as they and the boy are the only participants to the full truth of what happened.

Flowerpots
DIR: Rafael Sommerhalder  United Kingdom/Switzerland, 5 min. Animation, U.S. Premiere, Student

Charlotta-TS: Episode 2
DIR: Lewis Teague  USA, 10 min. Live Action
*Filmmakers expected

Director's Statement
I wanted to learn how to shoot and market a movie on the internet so I began fishing around for a web series idea. I wanted to make a frivolous, funny movie, about serious topics.  My favorite actress, Laura Bayonas, told me about a fantasy character she always wanted to play, thus, Charlotta-TS was born. Charlotta-TS is Everyman (and Everywoman).  Her's is a universal quest - the search for identity, the search for love, and the search to survive.  Originally I was only going to make two or three episodes. However, Chatlotta-TS took on a life of its own and I quickly realized that I needed an entire season to tell the story I wanted to tell. I was having too much fun to stop.

2:00pm - Wheeler Opera House 320 East Hyman Ave. $6
Filmmakers expected. Program runs 60 min. This presentation is appropriate for ages 11+
Program subject to change. Play order to be announced.  For additional film information please see the Films for Families CineFiles.

Formic	A skateboarder trying out new tricks unwittingly threatens a small but important life in this clever action movie. (Roman Kaelin, Germany, 4 min.)  Read more...
Q&A	When Joshua interviewed his mother for the oral history project StoryCorps, their one-of-a-kind conversation covered everything from cockroaches to some poignant revelations. (Mike & Tim Rauch, USA, 4 min.)  Read more...
Flowerpots	A delightful animation that delves into flowerpots, hats, and habits. (Rafael Sommerhalder, UK/Switzerland, 5 min.)  Read more...
Franswa Sharl	Keeping the position of number-one son drives 12-year-old Greg to take some amusingly ingenious measures on a family vacation. (Hannah Hilliard, Australia, 14 min.)  Read more...
Alma	A little girl is captivated by a mysterious doll in the window of a rather unusual toy store. (Rodrigo Blaas, Spain/USA, 6 min.)  Read more...
Only One Boss	Everything we know about conflict, we learn as toddlers—here’s the hilarious proof. (Ellen Brodsky, USA, 10 min.)  Read more...
Math Test	Yujin tries to concentrate on his math test despite an unexpected visitor. (Jung Yumi, South Korea, 2 min.)  Read more...
Nico's Challenge	Thirteen-year-old Nico faces special challenges as he undertakes a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro, the world’s highest freestanding mountain. This real-life coming-of-age adventure teems with unexpected twists and unlimited inspiration. (Steve Audette, USA/Tanzania, 15 min.)  Read more...
A Happier Note	An original song celebrating the uplifting power of music, written and performed by Bridges High School senior Jacob Russo, filmed by students of local media education organization, Mpower. (Hannah Planalp, USA, 4 min.)

8:45pm - Wheeler Opera House 320 East Hyman Ave. $12
Filmmakers expected. Program runs 100 min. Competition Program Ten is appropriate for ages 17+
Program subject to change. Play order to be announced. For additional film information please see the Program Ten CineFiles.

Battered	Thirteen-year-old Jacotte arranges a special birthday celebration for her brother in the woods. Everything is going well until they make a strange and compelling discovery. (Louise de Prémonville, France, 16 min.) Read more...
The Art of Drowning	An animated rendering of a work by American poet Billy Collins. (Diego Maclean, Canada, 2 min.)  Read more...
Banana Bread	Thirty-something Matt has a stereotypically fretful mother. But in this amusing case, her worry is warranted. (Barton Landsman, USA, 9 min.)  Read more...
Green Sea	A lyrical meditation on the rhythms and routines of cultivating the crop known as “green gold” in Argentina’s glorious Misiones province. (Ignacio Busquier, Argentina, 15 min.) Read more...
The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger	Animator and cartoonist Bill Plympton serves up another of his famously twisted tales. (Bill Plympton, USA, 4 min.) Read more...
Cigarette Candy	Reluctantly playing ”hero” at his homecoming party, a young, upstanding Marine sees a way out when he finds himself drawn to an unlikely guest. (Lauren Wolkstein, USA, 13 min.)  Read more...
Pigeon: Impossible	One rookie secret agent. One curious pigeon. One very special government-issued nuclear briefcase. Operation Laughter. (Lucas Martell, USA, 6 min.) Read more...
Is This Your Limb?	A clever micro-adaptation of a Craigslist "Missed Connections" post. (Michael Ramsey, USA, 1 min.)  Read more...
Roar	It’s Christmas in London, and the lonely, socially awkward Tom yearns for emotional contact. A stranger’s off-hand rejection of his goodwill gesture triggers a chilling response. (Adam Wimpenny, UK, 16 min.) Read more...
Wolves	A howling wolf, an embarrassing accident, and a missed opportunity. Love is made of courage. (Rafael Sommerhalder, UK/Switzerland, 6 min.) Read more...
God of Love	A lovestruck, lounge-singing darts champion finds his prayers answered when he receives a mysterious box. Romance is in the air in this bohemian charmer. (Luke Matheny, USA, 18 min.)  Read more...